Edit Video in Sync with Music

[ozab]

Hello - Can someone please tell me how to edit a video that synced with music?

For example. seen 1 cuts on the beat of music to seen 2 etc.

Thanks alot.

[redwudz]

What's the video format? Most highly compressed formats have to be cut on the keyframe (I Frame) or re-encoded at that point or you will have sync problems or may have glitches in the video. Frame accurate cutting is very difficult on many formats. Divx/Xvid has keyframes every 300 frames by default, so not good for editing. I sometimes convert the video to DV-AVI, or HuffyUV or another lossless format, then do frame accurate editing and then convert it back to a more highly compressed format. You may need lots of hard drive space for this.

If you are asking how to detect the music beats so you can cut on them, some editors will let you 'scrub' back and forth like they used to do with a audio tape to find the beats. Or Audacity has a 'beat detector', though I'm not sure that's the purpose of it.

You would need to give more details on what you want to do for any real advice.

[Cornucopia]

This may sound like a flip answer (and it partly is), but

It's like you're asking "how do I walk"?

Well, you put 1 foot in front of the other (but a little off to the side), lean on it, then start all over with the other foot.
Do this until you move forward fluidly and don't trip/fall down anymore.

Editing is like that. Practice, A LOT! Do this until your placement of scenes is intuitive.
I'm not going to give you steps, because every editing app is gonna be a little different, and I notice you like Pinnacle Studio (which I avoid like the plague, so I wouldn't be helpful there anyway).

But, like what was previously stated (and for those same reasons), start off with a copy of the video this isn't inter-frame compressed. You absolutely need full access to any frame you want to pick.
Hopefully, your editor has a feature where you can set a mark point at any arbitrary point within a clip, and then be able to snap your edit to that markpoint. And also have visual waveform thumbnails of your audio files. This will allow you to match hits/beats with specific points in the picture. Other than that, it's VERY trial-and-error.

Scott

[fitch.j]

In simple,

In your editor of choice make sure you have the wav visualiser on for the audio track so you can physically see the 'shape' of the audio, the larger you can make this the better. You should then (when zoomed in suffieciently) be able to find the frame that is closest to the beat you want to cut on simply by playing the audio for a couple of seconds around the beat and looking at the shape of the audio. I say closest as very rarely is it precise, but to 1/25th, or 1/30th, of a second its un-noticable on playback.

Your going to need a good NLE to do this with though.

[ozab]

Thanks to everyone. It now makes sense.